New Blu-ray Laser From Sharp Could Pave the way for 100GB BD-R Disks

Recordable Blu-ray media has been expensive, and slow to catch on, but would a bump to 100GB capacities change your mind? New developments made by Sharp could do just that by introducing a blue-violet laser which is able to read triple-layer or even quad-layer Blu-ray disks. Current BD-R single layer disks hold a mere 25GB.

The light put out by the beam is much stronger than traditional readers at 500mW, and it is made possible thanks to an aluminum oxynitride layer that is located squarely between the laser’s crystal and dielectric film which is meant to protect the laser.

In addition to capacity increases, this could also allow for writing speeds of up to 8x across all four layers, making it a much more interesting archiving option for digital packrats. Prices and availability still haven’t been announced yet, but the company describes the technology as “production ready”. At the very least it would be nice to see a new affordable disk option come along to replace those aging 4.7GB DVD’s, which frankly, just don’t cut it size wise anymore.

Are you itching for new recordable disks, or is flash the future of the sneaker net?

Comments

The reason optical media fails to excite anymore is because it just doesn't seem as big as it once did. Back when CDs first hit the street, they were three to four times the size of an average HDD. It was exciting to imagine how much you could archive onto just one disc. Flash forward to present day tech, and it's more like "how many discs per HDD?" Even 100GB/disc seems like a headache - both in the disc-swapping sense, and the "how am I gonna catalog these" sense.

I'm a small time photographer, and already my image collection is over 130GB. I intend to grow my business quite a bit in the next few years, and all I can say is thank god HDD capacities are growing as fast as they are. The only practical solution for me is to use external drives to back up my internal drive. I stopped waiting for an optical tech that could handle my needs a long time ago.

I also sympathize with the user who complained about having more discs laying around his house. I almost never burn anything anymore (I'm not just talking about photos at this point) and I don't even like buying games that I can't get from Steam. Just too much physical dust-collecting shit to have lying around.